The hidden SEO influence of outdoor media

Let’s face facts; there are numerous factors that determine how your website ranks from the perspective of SEO. The length and quality of your content is one of the most important, while the number of domains linking to a page also correlates directly with your Google ranking.

There are other, less obvious factors that can have a positive impact on your brand’s SEO, however, with the successful use of outdoor media and billboards one of the most interesting.

In this post, we’ll explore the hidden influence of outdoor media in closer details and ask how this can boost the SEO performance of your brand.

How Can Outdoor Media Positively Impact your SEO? A Brief Breakdown

The positive influence of outdoor media on SEO has come under the spotlight in recent times, with Nielsen having recently released several telling insights. One of the most compelling revealed that OOH media now accounted for 22% of all search interactions generated by offline marketing channels, including historical trail-blazers such as television and print.

Overall, 46% of respondents claim to have entered a search query online after interacting with an outdoor media message, and this number is set to rise further in the years ahead.

The volume of online interactions generated by outdoor media is crucial to SEO performance, particularly in relation to branded searches. After all, the bold and visually-striking nature of billboards provides a platform on which brand names and identities can take centre stage, optimising the amount of times that potential customer search directly for your business.

This immediately makes your business appear more popular to search engines such as Google, and this in turn delivers two key benefits to the SEO performance of your brand. Firstly, it leverages the fact that Google tends to favour trusted brands as part of its drive to create a positive consumer experience, with a clear emphasis on reputation and identity helping you to peak relatively quickly from an algorithmic perspective.

It’s also been suggested that an increase in branded search volumes can improve your SEO ranking across the board. In precise terms, this enables your business to rank higher for non-branded queries or phrases, specifically those that are relevant to the unique products or services that you offer.

Monster is certainly a brand that has leveraged this in the past, having previously invested heavily in outdoor media as a way of creating new identity to appeal to Millennial job-seekers. Across a segregated and targeted campaign, the brand managed to leverage all of the natural advantages associated with OOH advertising and billboards while also driving a higher number of branded and unbranded searches.

With regards to the former, the campaign managed to reach 77% of the target audience, optimising brand exposure and creating the potential to trigger a high volume of searches. Beyond this, Monster also reported a 15% increase against the baseline that they would expect to apply for jobs during the campaign, while Google search volumes for the related terms ‘jobs’ and ‘Monster’ increased by around 20%.

The takeaway here is clear: if you can structure your OOH campaign so that your brand appears in a high volume of searches alongside a targeted, unbranded phrase, Google’s algorithms will create an association between these two separate entities. This will create relevance, and ensure that your brand ranks higher in relation to this phrase going forward.

The Key’s in the Execution – How to Leverage Outdoor Media to Boost your Online Ranking

At this point, the positive of outdoor media on your brand’s SEO performance should be clear to see. However, what remains unclear is how to successfully leverage outdoor media and execute the perfect OOH advert, as this requires knowledge, understanding and a clear eye for design.

The first thing to determine is your budget, as you must manage the cost of your campaign if you’re to achieve a viable ROI. This will determine how much you spend on the design and production of your advert, while in the case of billboards it will also help you to select the right size and booking term.

The location of your billboards and OOH media materials is also crucial, depending on your precise objectives as a brand. The aforementioned Monster campaign is evidence of this, as it utilised relevant locations to reach an impressive 77% of its target audience and engage the interest of potential customers.

So, you’ll need to have a clear understanding of your campaign objectives (such as building brand exposure or reaching new demographics) and the key customer segments that you are looking to target, as this will enable you to select the locations that are likely to trigger the highest rate of online searches and interactions. If you also select OOH channels such as traditional billboards, you’ll be able to avoid paying a premium for locations with high levels of traffic and footfall.

Aside from effectively reaching and engaging customers, it’s crucial that your OOH adverts use colour contrasts, typography and striking imagery to showcase your brand name. It’s essential that your brand name is instantly recognisable and identifiable by the individuals that interact with your OOH campaign, as this quickly provides them with the key information that they need to complete a branded search online.

With the appropriate use of clear and concise primary messaging, you can also leverage relevant, unbranded keywords to help improve your overall SEO ranking.

The Last Word

Hopefully, this article will have offered an insight into the hidden influence of outdoor media on SEO, while also suggesting ways in which you can leverage this for the good of your brand.

Make no mistake, OOH adverts and billboards can have a hugely positive impact on the number of online interactions and searches that relate to your brand. This is just one of the reasons why outdoor marketing channels are emerging as the dominant drivers of assisted conversions in the digital age, and will continue to thrive in the future.